Here we are in 2010, fifty years after decolonisation. Is there anything at all to commemorate, or should one on the contrary start all over again?

Here restoration of authoritarian rule, there administrative multi-partyism, elsewhere minimal, easily reversible advances, and just about everywhere, extremely elevated levels of social violence – cyst-like situations, larval conflicts or open warfare – based on an extraction economy that, following the logic of colonial mercantilism, continues to favour predation – this, with scant exceptions, is the overall landscape.